It started two weeks ago. I wandered into work on Monday and found my desk overrun with them. It’s not that I hadn’t been warned. A week prior, my co-worker Gary Boneno warned everyone, “You better not leave any food lying around!” He said this while sweeping ants into the trash with a dustpan and broom. Boneno means business. A former soldier who served in Operation Desert Storm, those ants messed with the wrong man that morning when they decided to creep into our kitchen for some leftover Danish pastries.

King of the hill
So I shouldn’t really have been surprised when the ants returned a week later. It’s not like I had much on my desk – just an open package of chocolate chip cookies. And a half-eaten bag of Doritos. And some Charms Blow Pops. But they were wrapped, so come on!

In truth, my office could double as a food pantry. Quickly surveying the room right now I spy a can of chocolate-covered caramel popcorn, a package of travel-sized Mott’s applesauce, Diet Snapple, Arizona Sweet Tea and bottles of oil and vinegar, left over from my return from Italy this spring when I had to slowly wean myself off bread dipped in the savory combination. In short, I really don’t see what the ants are in here for anyway.

Our office carpet is kind of a mottled bluish-green and it’s nearly impossible to detect tiny ants on it. I spent the better part of half an hour trying to figure out how they got in (the front door). After clearing my desk and sweeping the culprits into the trash, I hosed the place down with Raid. As an aside, I can’t get over how Raid now comes with this fake kind of spring scent to mask the scent of death. The last time I used Raid, it smelled as deadly as it is.

“Wow, guys! This stuff smells great!” I said while ants lay suffocating on the carpet. You could tell it had been a while since I’d used the stuff.

“Um, no. It smells horrible. It smells like Raid,” Sean O’Connell quipped from his office.

A co-worker and I headed outside to find where the ants were calling home. It didn’t take long. There was an anthill the size of a small SUV underneath a shrub outside our front door. The next day we had ant kill on the hill, the kind of nasty foodstuff that the poor little workers unsuspectingly take back to the nest, killing everyone involved. It really blows being at the bottom of the food chain.

‘My aching thorax’
My sister and I grew up watching a short-lived HBO series called “Encyclopedia.” Every episode featured a different letter and, like an encyclopedia, different skits were performed explaining each chosen word. For the mid ’80s, the costumes, sets and musical numbers in the series were amazing. Thanks to the show, we were considered wise beyond our years by second grade, spitting out knowledge about amoebas, Attila the Hun and alchemy.

The “A” episode featured a segment with two actors dressed like ants carrying huge hunks of bread in their mandibles. One was considering revolting from the anthill, complaining about always serving the queen ant and how tired she was of simply following orders. The segment taught how much ants could carry, their various body parts, life in the hill and how short their life spans were. The segment began with the dissenting ant dropping her crumb and crying, “Oh my aching thorax!” while rubbing her back. It never failed to reduce Keri and me to tears of laughter. It’s a phrase we still use today.

I couldn’t help but think of the episode as I smashed ants with a paper towel, their jaws greedily full of chocolate chip chunks and large pieces of nacho cheesier Doritos. I felt bad – but not bad enough, apparently. It seems I have activated some kind of heinous anthill karmic curse.

Out for revenge
This weekend, I took my sister road bike shopping. I promised to get her one for her graduation and hoped to secure her some wheels before 24 Hours of Booty, July 27-28.

Finding one’s road bike is like searching for the Holy Grail. It’s just about as elusive and expensive, assuming you could put a price on the Grail. Ladies, think of shopping for a bathing suit and then multiply that quest by about 10 million times the aggravation. That’s what my experience has been in finding a perfectly fitted road bike. It probably wouldn’t be so difficult if money were no object. But at more than $1,000 per bike, I want her road bike to at least be able to make a cappuccino.

With me it was easy. I participated in a cross-country bike trip after graduation for Habitat for Humanity and was issued an R400 Cannondale. I’m sure I’d be comfier on other rides, but I have never really thought twice about it. My sister is a whole other ball of wax. She has never really ridden a road bike, so that’s a new degree of difficulty, and she’s short so it’s tricky finding anything she can even try on for size.

Thus, as we spent our Sunday at REI, Ultimate Bicycle and Performance Bike stores, Keri made lazy laps around various parking lots and I inevitably found thousands of different anthills. They inundated my purse while we were in REI’s parking lot. I sat on the curb in the Performance Bike parking lot and noticed ants biting my foot. Three more crawled up my shorts and bit my thigh. I ended up doing that crazy insect dance you see people do when they are chased by bees or covered in spiders. Ants are more difficult to spot. I found them in my bra and behind my ear. Those buggers travel fast.

I tried to act cool, waiting until we had returned to the car to fully strip down and shake out my clothes. “Do you think I could drive home like this?” I asked my sister, as I sat there in my underwear, searching the seams of my clothes for the miniscule carnivorous creatures.

“You could try,” she said with a laugh.

“Yeah, I can see myself trying to explain it to the cops now,” I said. “Sorry, officer, there were these ants, I swear!”

I went home and took a Benadryl, slapping cortisone on the hateful little bites. As I said, it’s been a while since I’ve dealt with ants. The whole experience has reminded me what a tenuous connection we humans really have with the outdoors. It’s also reminded me that ants are not to be underestimated. They can carry 50 times their own weight for a reason. And apparently they spend much of that capacity carrying grudges. Step lightly, my friends, step lightly. And next time, maybe just give them the cookies.